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“Here you go.” She hands me the glass and her fingers brush mine as I take it from her. She smiles at me, looking up through her long dark lashes and I’m suddenly reminded of the night we first met back in Ireland almost fifteen years ago.
We were at an event for the law firm she was working for. I remember thinking she was the most beautiful woman in the room. She’d been there with her fiancé that night, but she had left with me, and we had stayed together for the next ten years. Coming to New York had always been a dream of hers, and when all that shit went down with my father and the twins, it had seemed like the perfect time to move.
We’d had our whole future mapped out — or at least I’d thought we had. But Erin had an entirely different future in mind. One that included babies and a house in the suburbs, and that just isn’t the life for me.
“For someone who just made a few million dollars this afternoon, you seem pretty miserable, Shane,” Erin says, snapping me from my thoughts.
I shake my head. “Sorry,” I mumble before I down the second glass of whiskey.
“Will you slow down? I’m struggling to keep up with you,” she laughs softly as she downs her own drink.
“You don’t have to keep up with me. In fact, you shouldn’t.” I arch an eyebrow at her. “You never could handle your liquor.”
“Well, that was the old me. The new me is much tougher,” she purrs as she perches on the edge of my desk and leans toward me.
“Is that so?”
“Yes,” she replies as she holds out her glass until I grab hold of the bottle and pour us each another.
Chapter
Forty
CONOR
As soon as the last of my bouncers leaves the club after closing time, I make my way through the basement of our building toward the elevator leading to our apartment. I would love nothing more than to crawl into bed with Jessie and press myself against her soft, warm body, but I know she’ll be with the twins or Shane. I suppose I could do with some sleep anyway.
Just before I reach the elevator, I see Shane stepping out of the shadows and making his way toward me. “You up early, bro, or you not been to bed yet?” I smile as he reaches me. We caught up over a few shots of whiskey in my office just before midnight last night, but it wasn’t enough. I have missed all of my brothers so fucking much.
“Both.” he grins at me. “I have a present for you,” he says, indicating his head toward the other end of the basement.
“A present? For me?” I arch an eyebrow. “You shouldn’t have.”
“You won’t be saying that when you see what it is,” he chuckles softly as he starts walking away from me and toward the rooms we sometimes use down here for various purposes. Mostly to get information from our enemies. I experience a wave of guilt as I recall how we used one of these rooms to keep Jessie prisoner for a few days two months earlier.
I follow Shane until he stops at the door to my favorite room, containing all of my favorite toys and instruments, and I wonder what just what this present is he’s referring to. He pulls out a huge key and unlocks the door before stepping inside with me close behind. There are two men, naked and strung up by their ankles, like two pig carcasses in a slaughterhouse.
At the sound of us coming into the room, they start to sputter and shake on their hooks. I can see they don’t have tape on their mouths, although I see blood pouring down their faces and dripping onto the floor.
I look over at Shane as I close the door behind us. “Why do they sound funny?”
“I cut out their tongues,” he says with a shrug.
I nod at him and then look back to the two men, wondering what they’ve done to incur my brother’s wrath. It’s not often he indulges in such depravity these days.
“You recognize them, Con?”
I step closer to them. Crouching down on my heels, I grab hold of one of them by his hair and lift his head slightly. It’s hard to see his features fully in the dim room and through all of the blood and snot, but I smile when I realize who these two assholes are, and cutting out their tongues is going to be the least of their problems by the time I’m through with them.
The one I’m holding onto squirms in my grip. A strangled gurgle comes out of his mouth and his eyes widen with fear as he recognizes me too.
“You remember what I said I’d do to you?” I say to him and he flinches. “You’re going to wish I’d killed you in that parking lot while my girl watched, because she would have made me end it quickly. She’s good like that. But now there’s just me and my brother. And I am going to make you feel pain like you cannot even imagine,” I snarl, and the second man wriggles and screams too, but the noise is drowned out by the sound of him choking on his own blood as it runs down his throat.
I stand tall and start to take off my jacket and shirt. I don’t want them soaked in the blood of this pair of assholes.
“You certainly found these two and got them back here fast, Shane,” I say as I unbutton my shirt. “I’m impressed.”
“Impressed? Really? You underestimate me, bro,” he grins at me as he unbuttons his shirt too.
